In Search of Fall Colors

In Search of Fall Colors

Walking in

We’re watching  Jackie Purcell wearing her best weather person trust me smile telling us Thursday will be the best day of the week and we’re totally buying it even though we have had a solid month of relentless rain. Can’t promise any sun she says but definitely no rain on Thursday. Thursday finds us loading the car and off to the cabin to find some fall colors. True to some law of the universe no sooner do we close the car door and head out the driveway the first drops splash across the windshield.

Just a passing sprinkle we nod in denial. Only  the sprinkle follows us all the way up the highway turning more and more into a downpour and definitely not passing. High stream warnings come over the radio raising images of our new bridge support getting washed away. Checking fall colors turns into checking on the bridge, not that there is anything we could do about the high water. In the back of my mind trying to get through is some nebulous thought about that other thing that goes with high stream warnings. I skip it.

On the train the usual Fall collection, camo clad hunters in season, a smattering of tourists out of season, about 20 gray heads up for the day from the Kenai Senior Center looking for views of Denali,  color hunting cabin dwellers like us, everyone on the same topic, rain. 

Thursday is the day for the Hurricane Turn, the train that goes as far as the Hurricane Gorge  where it stops and sits out on the trestle 300 feet in the air, boiling white water in the canyon below,  everyone taking pictures relishing their scary Alaska adventure. Then it heads back to Talkeetna. The railroad sells this as a great tourist excursion and never mentions that you better not be acrophobic.  We get off long before the Hurricane trestle. Today we talk ourselves out of going  fishing for our usual first night at the cabin dinner. Too wet and the stream is too high and I never really like fishing in the rain. We load on our packs and head for the cabin trail when that nagging little back burner I couldn't remember about streams too high suddenly jumps into focus. Front and center there it is. The meadow is flooded. 

The trail to the cabin goes through the meadow for a good 200 yards or more. What I couldn’t ( or wouldn’t ) dig out of my brain was that with high stream warnings the culvert that drains the meadow under the railroad tracks often becomes plugged. Water backs up and floods the trail. We weigh the options. Go up the tracks and unplug the culvert. We’ve  done that before but it takes hours and we’ll get just as wet doing that as slogging through the water in the trail and still be 2 hours away from the cabin. Work our way around the meadow and cross over the beaver dam. We’ve done that too but we can’t be sure of the condition of the dam and the thought of bush whacking through uncut wet brush is just as bad as wading through the flood. And then all the options are off the table because we did our maybe-we-shoulds while moving forward into the flood and now I’m facing the inadequacy  of 14 inch LL Beans as cold water pours into my boots. I’m up to my knees. Fume. Remind me why we’re doing this I say to Dan. Maybe you should stay here and take the train back comes his reply. That thought gets all of 30 seconds, a vision of sitting in the rain for 3 hours wet through to the skin, cold water sloshing in my boots, nervously  looking out for bears when at the cabin waits dry comfy clothes, a warm spruce fed fire and hot chocolate with marshmallows even.

We plod on. Don’t fall says Dan. Wet to my knees is one thing but a full dip would be too much. I place my walking sticks carefully with each step.

Half way through the flooded meadow the trail comes to an old beaver stream built by a long ago beaver as his own private waterway to his dam.  In the old days we use to just jump across it but eventually we added a bridge to accommodate  snow machines in the winter and old bodies no longer sweet on jumping in the summer. 

We find the bridge floating, still sitting right there above the spot its suppose to be but actually floating. The stream is a good 3 feet deep adding another 3 feet to the 2 foot flood.

The beaver stream bridge when its not floating

How can we cross the beaver ditch I want to know since we can’t jump it and I don’t want to go into itand put the water up to my neck. 

We’ll use the bridge says Dan like there’s nothing out of the ordinary here as I see  him trying to step 2 feet up on a floating bridge log . Eventually he gets his foot on it and gets enough control over it to push it down to solid ground. Under 2 feet of water its now anchored across the beaver ditch. So that’s the plan. Then he does the same thing to the log next to it. 

Get on sideways he says so your feet are holding down both logs at the same time. Side by side we do a  sideways two step across and nothing terrible happens at the other end when Dan steps off first and leaves me on the logs alone.  

The trail buried in grass

How quickly one can get use to anything. The water no longer feels cold. The initial horror of slogging through a flood is now a not too unpleasant  wade through a pond, pretty greenery floating gently on stems anchored to the grassy bottom. I’m actually noticing the shapes and colors. We are soon moving out of the flood as the water shallows to find ourselves wading instead through water soaked grass, ferns and fire weed falling into the trail grabbing us around the ankles calling for a kind of kick forward step to escape the clutches and not trip.

    By the time we get up the second hill and plop down on our rest stop bench I’m back to glad I came even as I’m sitting in the rain. 

Moving again we hear the loud sound of gurgling water getting louder as we  go. Ahead our water pipe stuck in a hillside spring to quench our thirst on a hot dry walk is full of the noise we longed for all summer but never heard. Somehow its never more than a trickle when its hot and dry. Today, in all the wetness its full and bubbling and we take a minute to stand in the rain and enjoy the sweet  taste of it. 

                                                                     

                             

Further on another gurgle more like a roar. 

This time its the Creek. Around the final bend in the trail eyes searching for the bridge we find it high and dry

perched on its new leg with only a gentle side current lapping around the foot.

That's because Dan and William did a little boulder excavating on a previous trip. All it takes is a long enough lever.

Removed of its current-channeling boulders which threatened the bridge footings the heavy water  is sweetly sluicing right down the middle.                                   

Before - Full of Boulders

                                   

No longer a problem

Later, shutters off, gas on, water hooked up, fire roaring in the stove, wet clothes hanging, hot chocolate steaming I feel the old cheshire cat  smugness coming on and settle in for a good read to the cozy sound of rain on the roof.

Out the window the colors of a rainy fall, all the shades of brown with cinnamon, cayenne, coffee, chocolate. Only the high bush cranberry has what we came for looking all the redder standing out in the muted tones around it.

Fern and Fireweed

Highbush cranberry